2014 - Who was best?!?

Sometimes I think magazines and websites and your average man or women on the street likes a record or a song or a band or artist because they've been told to like them, by other magazines, websites or people.

Some will call them hipsters. There's more to a hipster than that. Listening to a The War on Drugs song on YouTube, the comments section is littered with vitriol, backbiting, smears and accusations that if you liked the song you are a hipster, if you didn't you were an idiot. Some were asking why people couldn't just come out and admit to liking Wham, or Elton John or Coldplay, and naturally people hit back with the kind of petty insults you'd expect.

Now I like Elton John. The early stuff. About 1970 - 74 with a smattering of songs here and thereafter, but his best work comes in that period, on 'Madman across the water' 'Tumbleweed Connection' and 'Honky Chateau'. The first two Coldplay albums are great, and then Chris Martin disappeared up his own arse never to be seen again. There's the weird Hollywood A-lister who purports to be him, churning out sub-90's club dance tracks with his backing band and splitting up with his Hollywood A-lister actress wife to start up with another Hollywood A-lister actress, but I'm not sure who he is. He's not the curly haired student type that brought us 'Shiver' and 'High Speed' in the dying embers of the 20th century.

The point is that is seems we can all agree that Justin Bieber is a twat but we can't agree on what's actually a great band or record. Everyone will have their opinion, however wrong that opinion may be, buts it's those that spend their time, slagging each off on comment sections and forums that I don't get.

NME have just released their Top 50 album of the year. It took me a while to get to the number one as I trawled through pages of oppressively, distracting advertisements left, right and most annoyingly permanently at the top of the screen, but it turns out it was St Vincent, a record that has passed me by this year, maybe because I don't read NME and rarely go on their website unless through boredom.

I can remember when NME was important. Vital even. Based on the staggering array of brightly shining ads for albums, and clothes, and shoes and food, not that many people buy NME and its only source of income is by selling two thirds of the pages on NME.com to companies for gaudy adverts. The end of year album list used to inspire hundreds of comments. In nearly 24 hours there are 9.

For what it's worth quite a few of my top 10 albums of the year featured in their Top 50, none in the Top 5, or 10, or 15, but Royal Blood crept into the Top 20 at 19. I'm obviously not a hipster then. Thank fuck.

I've been side-tracked from the main purpose of this blog post, my Top 10 and ultimately favourite album of the year. I was going to ramble on about what was best about each record but instead I've rambled on about the what makes a hipster and why NME is now shit.

Anyway, I'll just list them here. I think you'll find that this is the definitive list and if you disagree you are a hipster and have no taste or your ears are all blocked with wax and you can't hear properly. Or you're a twat.

Top 10 Albums of 2014 are:

at No.10 -

Jack White - Lazaretto

at No.9 -

We are Scientists - TV en Français.

at No.8 -

Temples - Sun Structures

at No.7 -

Elbow - Take off and Landing of Everything

at No.6 -

Beck - Morning Phase

at No.5 -

Mark Morriss - A Flash of Darkness

at No.4 -

Morrissey - World Peace is none of you Business

at No.3 -

Alt-J - This is all yours

at No.2 -

Royal Blood - Royal Blood

and at No.1 -

Hookworms - The Hum


To be honest, there is not a lot between any of them. There is a cigarette paper between Hookworms and Royal Blood. Both incredible albums. I'm not sure if it is a coincidence that the top 5 are all from the latter part of the year, or at least I discovered them in the latter part of the year. I think those 5 are the best 5 of the year, although Beck's is a gorgeous lament and sound tracks the period between dawn and about 10am perfectly.

It is a thankless task, I'm not convinced looking at that again, that it's definitely in the right order. What I do know is they are all brilliant records. 

What's odd about NME is that they manage to name 50 albums but when it came to the 50 Tracks of the Year, there were two tracks from an artist appearing. Surely you'd be able to pick a track off of each album or even tracks from albums that didn't make the list or single releases that were worthy.

Here is my 10% of a Top 50 Tracks of 2014.

No.5 - Hookworms - Off Screen
No.4 - Morrissey - Neal Cassidy Drops Dead
No.3 - Menace Beach - Fortune Teller
No.2 - Royal Blood - Figure it out
No.1 - Alt-J - Hunger of the Pines


Again, I could have others in there instead. There was 'Little Monsters' or 'Ten Tonne Skeleton' or 'Come on over' from Royal Blood that are all ball bouncingly good. I could have chosen 'I'm not a man' or 'Istanbul' or 'Mountjoy' from Morrissey's new record. There wasn't much doubt that 'Hunger of the Pines' was going to be No.1 though. A staggering song. If you'd have asked me at the beginning of the year if the best song of the year would have a sample of Miley Cyrus on it, I'd have told you to sod off.

Anyway, there it is.

I'm off to see Morrissey tomorrow at the O2, so I'll tell you all about that, and how 2014 was when I discovered the genius of Moz after 25 years of solo material, next week.